Page 153 of Ruthless Rustanovs
At the same time, Brian cried out, “No, dear girl, you have school! You’re almost done with your classes! And this is no place for you.”
“Yes, I have school and you have Eddie,” Sola responded. “One will still be there when I get home in the spring, but one might not.”
“I can’t let you do this. He’s a monster. His servants have barely fed me enough to survive. I can’t let them do the same to you.”
“Brian,” she said, taking her worried mentor by the arms. “You are like a father to me. You believed in me when no one else did. And I know you don’t want to hear this, but I’m young and I’m strong and I don’t have anybody waiting for me back in Valencia.
You have Eddie and your students. I can easily survive a few months in this cell, but if anything happened to you… ”
Her eyes teared up at the thought of any harm coming to the man who’d seen a director with promise where other professors had only seen a poor undocumented Guatemalan who’d somehow gotten into the most prestigious art school in California—perhaps only to fill some quota.
She shook her head at him, insisting, “You have to let me do this. You have to go. You know you have to go, and we don’t have time to argue about it. ”
“No, you do not,” The Russian said, butting into to their conversation. He regarded them with hooded eyes and a bored sneer, like her and Brian’s drama wasn’t interesting enough for him.
“Also, I have not said whether I will accept the trade.”
She threw him a murderous look. Let him try to keep Brian here even one more freaking moment.
He might be the big, scary monster in this situation, but she’d lost everyone she loved by the age of fourteen.
She knew how to fight for the few people in life who were precious to her.
And Brian and Eddie were definitely precious to her.
Judge be damned. She’d punch this guy in the throat with Brian’s car keys before she’d let him keep Brian here even a second longer.
She took a step forward, prepared to do just that.
But then the large Russian turned and yelled over his shoulder. “Gregory, are you still out there?”
“Yes, sir,” came a voice just beyond the building’s open door.
“Please escort my cousin’s spy to his rental car. Miss...”
He looked down at her, waiting for her name.
“Sola,” she answered, giving him her nickname, not to be friendly, but because the less this crazy dude knew about her, the better.
“Sola,” he repeated with a familiar sneer. It reminded her of Alexei Rustanov, the Texas billionaire by way of Russia, who’d funded the opera she and Brian had worked on last summer.
Hang on…Alexei Rustanov was Russian, too. Were these two somehow related? And if so, why had Alexei sent Brian to spy on him?
“Sola will be staying here in our prisoner’s stead until the judge comes in the spring. Escort Mr. Krantz out of town.”
“Yes, right away, sir,” the voice said, betraying no sign of surprise whatsoever.
“Go, Brian…” she said, pressing the keys into his hand before he could argue with her again. “We’ve only got an hour until the road closes, and Eddie is waiting for you. I’m not leaving. And if both of us disappear, Eddie won’t have anyone.”
Brian must have seen her point, because he finally started walking. “I’ll be in contact with Alexei Rustanov. He got me into this, I’ll make sure he gets you out of it.”
She could only smile. He might be asthmatic and cold, but nothing—not even a crazy Russian—could keep signalman-turned-director Brian Krantz from delivering a dramatic line as he made his exit.
Still, she kept her eyes on the Russian as Brian moved past the hulking man to the outbuilding’s door.
He’d agreed to her bargain, but seriously this dude was acting exactly like a villain in a bad action movie. And she’d sat through enough of those with Scott to know they were the kinds of guys who would pretend to agree, only to snap a hostage’s neck when you tried to make the exchange.
And this guy could definitely snap poor Brian’s neck.
Even though he was wearing a pea coat, Sola could see those were muscles, not fat, underneath all that wool.
Stretching the fabric so wide, she had to wonder if the coat, which fit perfectly, had been custom tailored for him.
Being from California, she didn’t know much about winter coats, but she highly doubted there were many high-quality coats available that fit that well for guys as big as him.
To his credit, the Russian let Brian slide past him with barely more than a small sneer. It must be a family trait, she thought, remembering every time she’d been sneered at by Alexei Rustanov, the domineering billionaire who expected everyone to do exactly as he said.
They stood like that in their wildly mismatched stand-off. Listening to the men speak outside. “Right this way, Mr. Krantz, I’ll drive you to your car. Are you okay getting yourself down to the main road and to the airport?”
“Yes, I think so…” she heard Brian answered, his normally strong voice feeble with cold.
The voices faded into the distance, and then she could hear the faint sound of a car starting up.
That was when Sola released the breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding. Brian was safe. In the car and on his way home. She could relax now… in the cold, dark cell she’d be calling home until spring.
“Follow me,” the man in front of her said, turning to head back toward the cell’s door.
“Excuse me?” she said, not understanding.
“You would like to sleep here then?” he asked, his crystal blue eyes cutting toward the silk dog bed on the floor.
“No,” she answered. “But don’t I have to? Isn’t that part of the deal?”
He grunted, irritation flashing across his half-damaged face.
“The deal, as you call it, is you stay here until spring. Here can be in this cage, or here can be in my warm house. I will let you decide.”
Then he walked away, as if to say it was up to her whether she followed him or not.
Sola studied his receding back warily. Her answer should have been obvious. Of course she’d rather stay in a place with some kind of central heating. Or a fireplace at least. But…
In the end, her shivering body made the decision for her. Stiffly propelling her out of the building and into the pitch-black night before her mind had time to chime in.
The sun, which had been in the process of setting when she’d first arrived in Wolfson Point, was now completely gone.
And the only reason she could see anything in front of her was because the Russian’s house was lit up in the distance, and the Russian was trudging slowly towards it, carrying that retro looking oil lamp.
From Sola’s vantage point out there in the cold, snow-covered darkness…the stone manor looked warm and inviting.
So why was her heart beating way faster now? And why did she have the feeling that following this so-called monster into his warm house was an even more dangerous proposition than staying behind in the freezing cage?